Social housebuilding slumps to lowest level ever

The building of social housing has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1949, re-igniting a furious war of words between housebuilders and government.

Social housing starts fell from 1500 to 1200 units a month in November, according to unadjusted figures released by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister last Thursday. Completions were static at 1800.

This means the overall figure for social housing completions has fallen by almost a third since 1997, when Labour came to power (see graph, right). Starts have slipped a massive 43% in the same period.

However, building for the private market has taken up some of the slack in the social housebuilding downturn, leaving overall housebuilding starts in the past six years only slightly down at 182,100, from 183,800.

A spokesman for the House Builders Federation blamed the social housebuilding shortfall on the planning system.

"The government's brownfield policy hasn't worked," he said. "Local authorities have clamped down on greenfield housebuilding but have not boosted brownfield building to make up for this."

He said plummeting greenfield construction was the only reason the government had met its target of 60% of development to take place on brownfield land.

"Total housing completions this year will be barely changed from last year's historic low," he added. "The housing crisis will continue and has worsened since 1997."

The figures come at a bad time for the government. It is under pressure to reform council tenants' right to buy their homes – a process that is siphoning thousands of properties from public to private ownership (HT 9 January, page 7).

However, the government said there would be no changes to current planning policies and that housebuilders would just have to get used to working within them.

But a government planning spokesman did extend a slender olive branch, saying: "We understand that there are some brownfield sites that aren't easy to build on.

"We want to work with builders on ways to make brownfield more attractive to them."

The HBF hopes this will include making funds available to aid the remediation of contaminated derelict land before conversion to residential use. It called for the funds to be directed to agencies such as English Partnerships, the government's regeneration quango.

The HBF spokesman refused to place a figure on how much was required, but said anything that eased the burden on housebuilders' balance sheets would mean more brownfield sites became viable.

He said the HBF hoped that guidance on how to alleviate the problems would be included in the forthcoming Communities Plan from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

The government spokesman also stressed that, although low, housebuilding figures relating to registered social landlords were greater than they initially appeared because of the number of conversions carried out on existing housing and those new homes completed by private sector builders and passed to associations under section 106 planning gain agreements, neither of which were included in this data.